


Back from the cordial grave

by middlemarch



Category: The Hour
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/M, French Cooking, Post-Canon, Romance, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-13
Updated: 2017-06-13
Packaged: 2018-11-13 11:48:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11184483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: The flat had been fragrant with herbs, the curtains drawn against the night when she got home.





	Back from the cordial grave

“It wasn’t what you’re thinking. It wasn’t Camille. Nor Marnie, stopping by to look in on me,” Freddie said calmly, taking a sip from the glass of wine, a robust red to match the excellent _boeuf bourguignon_ that he’d revealed when he lifted the lid of the dish, a deep enameled pot she hadn’t known either of them owned. The wine or the rich stew, or something else, had brought his color up and she glimpsed how he had looked as a boy, remembered how he had once flushed when he’d had too much bitter and they were both too drunk to dance.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Bel said, letting her hand rest beside the plate, aware she was holding her cutlery too tightly. It had been that or perhaps something about the way she’d bitten her lip that he noticed. She spoke almost without thinking, the response half-true, the way nearly everything had once been between them. Before Camille left, before the attack, before he had asked her a very serious question in only one word as the doctors released him, “please?” and she had answered with a nod, with her hand on his. With the way she had not looked away when he had had to drop his eyes from hers.

“Oh, you do and I do,” he replied, smiling a little, letting his hand, the one that troubled him less, rest around the throat of the wine-glass, his fingers curved and loose.

“We do?” Almost as if each word had been its own question, she heard how she’d said it and heard how Freddie laughed as soon as her lips pursed on the second.

“Fine. You’re wondering how I learnt to cook so well, who taught me and I’m telling you, it wasn’t because a woman taught me, not my mother of course. Not Camille and certainly not Marnie, she can hardly bear the smell of anything on the range now, goes the most peculiar green just at the mention. I learnt it like everything else, I read books. Voraciously, pun intended. And I’m quite good at it,” he said, letting just the hint of smugness into his voice, so she would sputter instead of gape.

“Freddie!” she exclaimed, not missing her cue.

“I’m not as good with pastry, but there’s a decent plum tart for afters, so finish your dinner,” he said, his voice warm and his eyes too, no sign of anything but affection in his expression, satisfaction and pleasure in how well he knew her and that she liked it. She lifted the next bite to her mouth and ate, tasting the hours he’d spent and how he’d imagined her response so well. She wanted something sweet to follow.

**Author's Note:**

> Just wanted to write a little vignette, to visit with Freddie and Bel in a warmly comforting way. The title is from Emily Dickinson.


End file.
